One use of detection methods such as mass spectrometry is the analysis of samples (such as tissues and cells) in which molecular spectra are correlated with morphological features of the samples. Correlation of mass spectra to morphological features can provide information regarding spatial distribution of biomarkers, differences in the spatial distribution of molecules between healthy and diseased tissue, compartmentalization of molecules, site-specific metabolic processing, as well as information on selective binding domains for a wide variety of natural and synthetic compounds.
Variations in surface morphology, degradation of samples, and the complexity and dynamic range of molecules present in any biological sample, such as tissues and cells, can produce artifacts and errors in the process of correlating molecular spectra to morphological features. As a result, such mass spectrometry analyses may be limited to only those molecular species which are in high abundance in a sample and which desorb easily, thus limiting the ability to analyze and effectively depict a quantity of molecules of interest with specific atomic mass or within a range of atomic mass (i.e., an “atomic mass window”) as a function of the position of the molecules in a sample.